Thursday night’s White House meeting is the third in the space of 24 hours for Obama. |
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Indeed, Thursday night’s White House meeting was the third in the space of a full day for Obama, Boehner and Reid, the principals in the talks. And after an early afternoon session in the Oval Office, White House Budget Director Jack Lew was allowed to rejoin ongoing talks in the Capitol where he met with senior staffers for Boehner and Reid as well as the House Appropriations Committee.

The activity followed the exchange of two major offers: the first from the speaker shortly before a White House meeting Wednesday night, followed by a counterproposal prepared by Lew and Senate Democrats and delivered back to the House near 3 a.m. Thursday.

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Neither side would publicly comment on the details, but information collected by POLITICO suggests the dollar differences have narrowed substantially.

The Boehner plan proposes a $1.049 trillion cap for nonemergency discretionary appropriations for 2011, about $79 billion less than Obama initially requested in his budget and $39 billion less than the spending rate at the beginning of this year.

Within these totals, the GOP is asking for higher defense spending than previously agreed to and $2 billion more the administration wants, thereby putting more pressure on domestic agencies to make cuts in their accounts. But there has been substantial movement toward Obama on the question of accepting more savings from mandatory spending programs vs. discretionary appropriations.

In fact, a breakdown of the counteroffer from the White House and Democrats shows relatively little difference there. Instead of $39 billion in cuts, the counterproposal calls for cuts of $34.5 billion, or a ceiling of about $1.0535 trillion. In the case of domestic spending, the two sides are still about $6.5 billion apart, and Republicans argue that this remains a serious stumbling block. But measured against the size of the government and the consequences of a shutdown, Democrats respond that the differences are small.

New ideas for savings appear to have surfaced. The Republican proposal counts $1.3 billion in savings by cutting the pay of federal employees, possibly by denying customary bonuses and step increases. And after further talks Thursday afternoon, Democrats said the policy riders now dominate the remaining agenda.

“What they are trying to do is boot strap,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “They know their riders can’t pass the Senate, so they say they have to be included in the budget. And the budget is a fragile work in progress to begin with. You put the riders on, it is the straw on the camel’s back.”

“We still think we can reach an agreement on money, but he is under enormous pressure,” said Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) of Boehner’s dilemma. “He says it’s not from the tea party. It’s from the old Republican guard that wants to show once and for all that they can force through some of these issues like abortion.”

Boehner’s allies have suggested as much, and while much of the focus has been on the freshmen, older social conservative members have already been a greater liability for the speaker.

By holding out — even at the risk of a shutdown — he may hope to give himself more leverage to go back to this bloc and show he has stood up for its concerns. The risk for Boehner is that he may have raised expectations among social conservatives to the point that a deal in which they don’t get what they expect is too great a letdown for them.

“He’s really negotiating with himself on when he goes back and faces the music,” a House Democratic aide said.

the gop's single mission is to bring this president down, they can care less about the country. they want reduced government, yet want government telling women what to do with their bodies, people who they can marry and have no problem funding a ridiculous defense department that accounts for 56% of all military spending in the world. at the same time, these clowns on the right cry we're poor and bailout the fat bankers with the middle class's money and give them a tax break while they are at it. to those in the "tea party", you're no "tea party", those guys thought for themselves, you are merely the neocons sheep because you're too dumb to see the big picture.

Is there anything funnier than 2 Liberals like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz discussing how disappointed they are with President Obama's policies and yet make feeble attempts to defend him at the same time. A Funny edited video, if you're in the mood for a good laugh.

How many people remember that the Democrats were required by law to pass a budget last year? This would be nonexistent. Maybe it was formulated by this administration for a bump like Slick Willie got in '95?

How many people remember that the Democrats were required by law to pass a budget last year? This would be nonexistent. Maybe it was formulated by this administration for a bump like Slick Willie got in '95?

How many people remember that the Democrats were required by law to pass a budget last year? This would be nonexistent. Maybe it was formulated by this administration for a bump like Slick Willie got in '95?

Its supposed to be online for three days for the public to read before it gets voted on also. What are the odds that will actually happen here? I mean, after all, in April of 2011 it has become a crisis you know.

It's about six months too late for the President for the President to suddenly be interested in passing a budget. He's too busy campaigning to pay attention to the real items that need to be done. There are all those parties and trips and vacations and golf. He had plenty of time to take care of this before now and so did the Democrats. Their fingerpointing isn't going to work. They were delinquent in passing a budget when Pelosi was in charge and they has all the marbles and votes.